The subject matter disclosed herein relates generally to a system for secure file access and, in particular, to a system to identify and manage access to derivative works generated from original files across an enterprise whether the files are accessed internally to or externally from the physical systems of the enterprise.
Managing access to a company's electronic data presents a number of challenges for enterprises such as companies, university and other educational organizations, hospitals, local, state, and Federal government agencies and the like. The rapid expansion of bring-your-own-device (BYOD), telecommuting, and mobile computing devices, such as laptops, tablets, and smart phones, have created an environment in which an ever-increasing number of devices need to access data and often need to access data from outside an enterprise's physical location.
Historically, enterprises have purchased enterprise management software in an attempt to control access to data stored on network drives. However, existing enterprise management software is limited to controlling access to files only by computing devices connected to the network on which the enterprise management software is installed. If a file is copied to another computer, to a local drive, to a removable storage medium, or emailed to a user outside of the enterprise, the enterprise management software can no longer manage access to the file.
Another challenge for enterprise management software is to protect derivative works. A derivative work is a work that is based on or derived from an existing work. A sales presentation may, for example, be a document that is protected on a network. An initial sales presentation may be reused for multiple customers. A portion of the information may be customized to target individual customers; however, the majority of the information in the presentation may be reused between presentations. Further, a portion of the presentation may include confidential information regarding a company's future product offerings. The first sales presentation is considered the original work, and each subsequent sales presentation prepared for additional customers is considered a derivative work. The original work may be deemed to be confidential and be assigned limited access rights. It would be desirable that each derivative work automatically be assigned the same limited access rights. Absent the detection of a derivative work and automatic assignment of rights, the creator of the derivative work may not be aware of the restriction or may forget to assign the same level of access restriction to a derivative work and the content of the original work that was to be protected may be freely available in the derivative work.
Thus, it would be desirable to provide an improved file access system that can detect a derivative work and automatically transfer digital access rights associated with an original work to the derivative work.